For $24M, Emperor-elect Trump will settle two class actions lawsuits regarding how Trump University fleeced its students. For those of you keeping score that amounts to just over 1/2 of 1% of Trump’s net worth and, after the lawyers get their cut, maybe $600 per member of the class.

The democratic representative from Florida came out with a doozy this week. He’s frustrated, and rightly so, that nothing coming out of the House is being taken up by the Senate. Here’s his quote direct from TheHill.com (and paraphrased a bit by moi):

It doesn’t make a difference if the Republicans in the Senate are blocking everything they can. At this point, if you put a cure for cancer up in the Senate, it would get filibusters

You know…it’s time we stopped screwing around when it comes to sentencing in murder cases that involve cars and trucks. It boils down to this: If you’re stupid enough, arrogant enough, or irresponsible enough to use a multi-ton vehicle as a weapon, then when you’re convicted you should spend the rest of your life in jail…PERIOD! No appeal, no extenuating circumstances, go straight the clink and rot there for the rest of your f*cking life!

Frankly, if it were up to me, I’d take ever case of vehicular manslaughter and prosecute it as murder first, letting the circumstances as presented at trial dictate whether or not the charge should be reduced. That would deal with two big problems we have with how cagers treat pedestrians: 1) The fact that most people exercise no more restraint—no more responsibility—with their cars than they would if they were on foot or even on a bike; 2) The fact that most states have ludicrous and complex sets of rules about when the use of a car as a weapon constitutes murder and when it does not. Plain fact is, if every pedestrian/car encounter that results in a death is treated as a potential murder, cagers will have to think twice about how they drive.

Today representatives of the Boy Scouts of America vigorously defended their organization against charges that they have systematically covered up allegations of sexual abuse of scouts for decades. When asked about the widely publicized civil case against Timor Dykes, an assistant scoutmaster in Portland accused of molesting a young man in the 1980’s, a BSoA representative said:

As you all know, the Boy Scouts of America would never allow a lesbian to be a scoutmaster. Therefore this case is obviously without merit.

In response to a question about the so-called “perversion files” that may be introduced into evidence at the Dykes trial, the representative muttered, “…f*cking clerical error! Somebody wasn’t ‘prepared’…,” before quickly leaving the press conference.

Two alarming new developments in the privacy arena are exposing the Obama administration as no better than Bu$hCo when it comes to protecting the privacy of Americans.

First, the administration is preparing to argue in a case before the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals that Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures do not apply to telco logs of the locations of cell-phone users. If fact, the FBI and local law enforcement agencies have been abusing such records for years, obtaining them merely by asking providers without a warrant and sometimes without probable cause.

To say that US politicians form an ‘elite’ that are so disconnected from the average citizen that they can’t even be bothered to verbally support, much less uphold, our laws would be a huge understatement. Just in the last week we’ve heard politicians on both sides of the political spectrum—from the idiot poser Sarah Palin to former President Bill Clinton—criticize their peers for upholding the law. And it doesn’t stop there: Officials high and low, from judges to law enforcement to representatives, seem now to believe that laws are just pesky restrictions that don’t really apply to them. Here are some examples pulled from last week’s news:

Sarah Palin and her fellow travelers from the so-called Tea Party Convention manage, in the space of a few days, to 1) Criticize the president for upholding the Constitution on matters of terrorism—though these blathering morons would never have tolerated that kind of dissent when the president was named “Bush” rather than “Obama”; and 2) Call for the reinstatement of unconstitutional ‘Jim Crow’ laws—despite the fact that most of their supporters probably couldn’t pass the kinds of civics exams that were the cornerstone of many laws designed to disenfranchise blacks.

January 15, 2010By:
ERITAS News ServicecloseAuthor: ERITAS News ServiceName: David GowEmail: mrblog@kinetic.seattle.wa.usSite:http://kinetic.seattle.wa.us/blogAbout: I am a policy analyst currently working in the field of environmental protection. Other activities include: Advocacy of public transit, including advanced technologies such as APMs and Personal Rapid Transit (aka 'podcars'). Writing political humor at "Wiseline Institute and Center For The Secular Humorism," and enviro-blogging at "This Week In Precipitation" on Zaproot. I also serve on the steering committees of the Greater Greenwood Bi-Peds, a grassroots group promoting pedestrian and bicycle safety in Seattle, and SoundPRT, an ad hoc Seattle group advocating podcars.See Authors Posts (352)Category: Humor, International, Law, Media, Politics, Religion, SatireNo Comments →

A sampling of this week’s output from the iNews 9000 Turbo wi-fi headline translator—

Headline: Steele- Reid should step down from leadership role for ‘Negro’ remarkTranslation: “Let GOP handle the Negro remarks”